All SOAP message parts and contents, except for the attachments, are written in XML.

This layer, which is defined in the SOAP Specification, specifies the XML scheme used to identify the message parts: envelope, header, body, and attachments. This section restricts itself to discussing the reasons why you would use SOAP and to describing basic concepts that will make it easier to work with SOAP messages.Ībove the transport layer is the SOAP layer. Once this support is put in place, other developers can focus on creating the Web services themselves. These pieces might be software that adds functionality to the basic SOAP exchange, or might be tools that administer SOAP messaging, or might even comprise parts of an operating system that supports SOAP processing. Although any two partners could define their own protocol for carrying on this exchange, having a standard such as SOAP allows developers to build the generic pieces that support this exchange. As such, it forms a natural foundation for Web services that also need to exchange information encoded in XML. The SOAP specification describes a set of conventions for exchanging XML messages. Firewalls can recognize SOAP packets based on their content type ( text/xml-SOAP) and can filter messages based on information exposed in the SOAP message header. The data integration offered by XML also makes this technology a natural for Web-based computing such as Web services. By representing data using XML, you can access data from legacy systems as well as share your data with other enterprises. The fact that SOAP messages are encoded in XML makes SOAP messages portable, because XML is a portable, system-independent way of representing data.

The structure of the data being exchanged is specified by an XML scheme. SOAP, the Simple Object Access Protocol, is a protocol that allows the exchange of structured data between peers in a decentralized, distributed environment.

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